Tag Archives: Marc Thiessen

When John Brennan appears for his confirmation hearing as the next CIA director tomorrow, he needs to explain to the Senate these ten major leaks of classified national security information from the Obama administration — including the strange timing of most of these disclosures.

EXPOSURE OF US-ISRAELI ROLE IN “STUXNET” ATTACK ON IRAN. On June 1, 2012, the New York Times reported that “President Obama secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities.” The story exposed the top secret codename for the program (“Olympic Games”) and the involvement of Israel, a US ally. At one point in the story, the Times directly quotes one of the president’s briefers telling him, “We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” adding, “Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed, ‘It’s got to be the Israelis,’ he said. ‘They went too far’” (emphasis added). In other words, it was leaked by someone “in the room” when the president was briefed on this cover action program.

EXPOSURE OF US-ISRAELI ROLE IN DEVELOPING “FLAME” VIRUS TO SPY ON IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM. In addition to the leak to the Times about the Stuxnet virus, a second leak to the Washington Post revealed on June 19, 2012 that the “United States and Israel jointly developed a sophisticated computer virus nicknamed Flame that collected intelligence in preparation for cyber-sabotage aimed at slowing Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, according to Western officials with knowledge of the effort.”

EXPOSURE OF SAUDI DOUBLE AGENT IN YEMEN. On May 8, 2012, a leak to the Associated Press revealed the role played by a double agent, recruited in London by British intelligence, in breaking up a new underwear bomb plot in Yemen. As a result of this disclosure, the double agent had to be extracted. The leak is being investigated by the Justice Department.

One of the centerpieces of the Democratic case for Barack Obama‘s reelection in Charlotte last week was the President’s record on national security – specifically, his decision to pursue the operation that eventually led to the death of Osama bin Laden.

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.

The Government Accountability Institute examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

Thiessen was able to get comment from the White House’s National Security spokesman, Tommy Vietor, who told him, “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”